


This Empty House

by Faltering_Light



Series: WhumpTimber 2020 [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Child Neglect, Depression, Gen, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26620972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faltering_Light/pseuds/Faltering_Light
Summary: Shortly after becoming Robin, Tim gets a few days off
Series: WhumpTimber 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924624
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	This Empty House

**Author's Note:**

> This fills Whumptober theme #8 "Where did everybody go?", prompts abandoned | isolation and Batman Bingo square Abandonment

Tim was bored.

Very, very fucking b o r e d.

He was about out of ideas for things to try.

Okay, it was probably more accurate to say that he was out of willpower when it came to trying things and hoping they would actually be interesting enough to get invested in them.

He was laying on his back on his bed, head hanging off the edge, doing something he knew damn good and well wouldn’t help a single thing- looking at everything he’d tried so far.

Marbles in and around a messy pile of books out in the hallway, where he’d played mini-pool for half a round, no pencil/pool stick visible from here but he was pretty sure he had left it there.

Laptop open, tabs and programs split between casework Batman may or may not have noticed him “borrowing” to work on. He had probably noticed and approved. Why else give him what was basically a mini Batcomputer?

How cool was that still, that he could say that _Batman_ gave him his own portable _Batcomputer_. How many people could say that? None! No one. Except maybe Dick. Probably. Even with that though, his morning round of poking at some of the coding had gotten boring much more quickly than usual, but he had picked up a few ways to improve his old computer in terms of efficiency and security, so at least that had been sort of useful?

Anyway. Open closet, clothes on the floor, everything inside halfway through a switch from sorting by color to sorting by fabric preference, since it was just stuff he pretty much only wore to sleep in or stay home in anyway. Going out clothes lived in the bigger closet off his bathroom now anyway, which... maybe that could be his next project? Move all his comfy stuff there and all his going out clothes back in here, so he could just shower and pass out after he got home from post-patrol stuff.

Nah, he would lose his incentive to actually sleep in his bed instead of just curling up on the rug in there in a pile of towels. It was almost more comfortable anyways, but probably a bad habit, so no.

 _Focus._ He had to keep practicing this sort of stuff too, observing and cataloguing without going off on tangents to himself, even when he didn’t really feel like forcing it. Like today.

Okay.

TV on, console on, the game he had spent maybe ten minutes messing around with still on the pause menu. He didn’t remember when exactly he had walked away from that, but the controller was still out on the floor. Might not hurt to actually pick that up before he did something stupid like trip on the cord, at least.

New poster sitting on the floor next to it with a pack of Blu-tack next to it. He had gotten the wrapper open and just... stopped there. Oops. That was kind of pathetic, it took less than a minute to actually get things like that up on the wall.

He rolled over and groaned. This whole thing was pathetic, really. Doing all of this stuff should have filled up his entire day, no problem, but he just. Couldn’t. With any of it.

All of it had been hard to start, hard to do, and easy to walk away from.

Days like today _sucked_.

He almost wanted to head over to the Cave just for a change of scenery. It was easy to brush off the little follow-up thought- _if Bruce was there, he would have something interesting to do._

No use in thinking something like that, no use at all.

First off, Bruce wasn’t there. Batman was off doing something “you don’t need to worry about, it’s for the Justice League. Go home, enjoy your time off.”

Right. Sure. He would get right on that.

That was uncharitable, he had hidden what was going on over here on purpose.

Second thing. Alfred probably wouldn’t let him into the Cave anyways.

Every single time he had gone over early to try to get some extra training in or to do some casework while Bruce was still asleep, Alfred had ambushed him before he could actually get down there. It was always “Ah, Master Timothy, there you are! Just in time for breakfast, come along this way” or “I have something hot to take the chill from your fingers before you go out and freeze them again” or something along those lines.

It was obviously because of what had happened to Jason, Alfred not wanting him down there more than he really actually _needed_ to be. Still, thinking about sitting in the nice, warm kitchen with nice, warm food that had been made _just for him_ was... It was...

He dragged one of the pillows up over his head and groaned again. Thinking about nice things and reading more into it than what was there would just hurt more later, so enough of that. There was no guarantee Alfred was even there anyway, with Bruce being gone.

Third thing, this was a pointless exercise anyway. He went over there to do exactly one thing, and that was to keep Batman from going off the rails again.

He needed to suck it up and stop thinking about bothering people where he clearly wasn’t wanted just to make himself feel better.

He rolled over, not bothering to catch the pillow before it slid off onto the floor. Maybe, if he could get himself to get up, picking that up would lead into cleaning up everything else?

Not that it mattered if he left things out or not, as long as it got picked up before his parents came back no one else would see it. He had a few weeks to get it done. No rush.

Benefits of an empty house, right? No one was ever _there_.


End file.
